


Insides/Outsides

by itslaurenmae



Category: Barkskins (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Mid-Canon, Period Typical Attitudes, mentions of assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27029179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itslaurenmae/pseuds/itslaurenmae
Summary: “They say all witches bear a mark. What is yours, Delphine?”
Relationships: Delphine Langois/Elisha Cooke, Delphine/Elisha Cooke
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Insides/Outsides

“They say all witches bear a mark. What is yours, Delphine?”

Delphine glared at Melissande. There was no way the other woman could have known about it, but Delphine didn’t appreciate her tone. It sounded accusatory, the way her mother had sounded when she’d come home that afternoon, bloody and bleeding, crying, scared, afraid, and sad. Her dress ripped, her shift in tatters, holding a threadbare shawl close to her body, right hand pressed hard and flat to the bleeding at her abdomen. Some of the blood was hers. And some of it was not.

She didn’t know how to tell Melissande that the reason why she wasn’t going to lift up her dress for Mother Sabrine or for anyone wasn’t that she was afraid of them seeing her woman’s parts. No, those were just fine, Delphine wasn’t scared of those. It was what lay on the outside right above them, on the top of her skin, where the smooth of her belly should have been. The mark was ugly, and crude, and mean, and even though it had happened some years ago, it was never going to fade away, still red and ruddy even years later. 

She didn’t know how to tell Mother Sabrine about the mark, either, but blessedly, she didn’t have to. When she’d asked Delphine to lift up her dress, Delphine took care to raise it just enough to bare her secret parts, and carefully placed her hands, one on top of the other, over the telltale scar. Only the thin layer of her shift and the trembling of her own fingers lay between her secret and the watchful eyes of Mother Sabrine. Delphine wasn’t sure what she’d do if the abbess saw it, so she laid very still and was quiet as she let Mother Sabrine inspect her. Maybe, if she’d just lain still and quiet back then, he wouldn’t have marked her so. Her mother had told her as much.

“You are intact, as God made you,” Mother Sabrine remarked, removing her hands from inside of her. 

Delphine let out a heavy breath, one she hadn’t realized she was holding. _Her insides were fine._

“You are lucky he didn’t puncture your insides,” was the only comfort her mother had offered to her as she’d cleaned her up. “It is only a flesh wound.”

It may have only been a flesh wound, but even though the woodcutter hadn’t damaged her insides, he’d done plenty of damage to her outsides, and as the third daughter of a miller, outsides were all Delphine had going for her. 

She was not as pretty or talented as her younger sisters, not as funny or beautiful as her oldest, and not as outgoing as Liliane, her favorite, who had died too young, sick one winter when Delphine was 11 and Lili was 12. Delphine missed her, even all these years later. Melissande sort of reminded her of Lili - they had the same yellow hair and wry smile, the same penchant for mischief. Delphine had found some comfort in that during their journey to Wobik, but after the comment at Claudette’s, she put distance between herself and Melissande. No one here could find out about the mark.

Maybe she’d be able to convince whatever husband she found to let her keep her shift on when they were married. She asked her oldest sister Julianne once how it was that she and her husband, Jaques, came together before she left for New France - she’d not been with a man and had questions still about the specifics, wondered if you had to take off all of your clothes to be with your husband.... but Julianne had laughed and told Delphine that she should ask their mother. 

Delphine had long stopped asking their mother for anything by that point, even though she was still a girl in many ways. She hadn’t asked for help when she bled that first time, the summer before the marking. She didn’t ask for help to replace the bandages in the weeks after the marking, and she didn’t ask for help packing her things when her father came home and told her that she’d been accepted as a Fille du Roi. There had been a terse goodbye with her mother, barely a close-lipped kiss on the cheek, and nothing more.

Everyone back at her old village knew, everyone back there found out. Cursed, they’d whispered. Marked, they shook their heads. ‘Tis a pity, she has such a pretty face. Her insides were fine.

No one here in New France could know. No one in Wobik could find out. _Her insides were fine her insides were fine her insides were fine._

  
  


It was her pretty face that had caught Pierre’s eye, she knew. They’d flirted awkwardly that night in the barn, and she’d been shy and overwhelmed but he’d looked at her intently and that had felt kind of nice, and before she’d really understood what she was agreeing to, they were going to be married.

Delphine didn’t know how to tell Pierre about the mark, so she hadn’t. Her insides were fine, and that should have been enough, right? They signed the papers and he took her to his home. 

She’d wanted him to just kiss her, to touch her face and her shoulders and hold her close, and maybe after they’d done that for a bit, she thought that maybe she’d want him to put his hands on her, and maybe even after that, she could have wanted him inside too, because even though no one had told her in as many words, she knew that’s what could happen, and maybe it wouldn’t be so scary if it was with someone who liked her, someone who wasn’t trying to hurt her, but no, Pierre could not see. She had not wanted him to see and she had tried to keep him from seeing but he did see and that was that, too. 

People always found out. 

Pierre was a man of few words, and she did not have the words to tell him before or after he saw, so there had been trembling and shaking and fear and sadness, instead of trembling and shaking of another kind. 

Maybe, if she’d told him before, if she’d been able to find the words, he would have let her keep her shift on, he would have gone slower, he would have listened to her. But she hadn’t told him before, and even when she’d tried to tell him her insides were good after he’d seen, the words caught in her throat and all she could do was cry on the porch. She’d slept on a chair by the fire that night, cold and away from him. 

He wouldn’t even look at her anymore. They annulled their marriage and Delphine cried. It was no different here than it had been back in France.

  
  


_My insides are good_ , she repeated, like a prayer, that night at Mathilde’s table, confessing the horrible truth of her the whole story to the widowed innkeeper.

“I am sure they are,” Mathilde reassured her, pouring her a second cup of tea. “You are a good woman, Delphine. You will make a fine wife for a man who is deserving. Pierre was not deserving.”

Delphine raised the teacup to her lips and took a sip, nodding in agreement as she swallowed. Another tear fell onto her sleeve, and she took a handkerchief out of her pocket to wipe her face. 

“We’ll find you another husband yet, if that is what you want.” Mathilde’s smile was warm and kind, comforting and caring in a way she couldn’t pin down. _Was this the way that mothers were supposed to look at their daughters?_ “Is that what you want, Delphine?”

Delphine nodded. “I think I do,” she sniffled. “But I am afraid.”

“Let me tell you something,” Mathilde said, scooting a little closer. “Everyone is afraid. I have been, and I know that I will be again. What matters is to find someone to stand next to you in the fear. A partner.” The firelight danced across their faces, flickering in the stone kitchen. “We will find someone for you yet.”

Pierre hadn’t spread her secret, and that was some small relief. She rarely saw him, even after she’d moved in with Mathilde. He avoided the tavern, and she heard no whispers about him or behind her back when she served patrons. 

When Mathilde told her to walk with her back straight and shoulders back, she did so reluctantly the first time. It felt odd, to walk with her head up and her eyes forward, to try on a confidence she was uncertain she truly possessed, but as the days stretched on, she practiced doing just that. 

“You can put on being confident, and you can take it off at the end of the day if you want to,” Mathilde advised, and slowly, Delphine began to believe it. _My insides are good, and my outsides are fine, too._

Each time she walked from the kitchen to the dining room to deliver a tankard of ale or a slice of prune tart, she held her head a little higher, her spine a little straighter. 

Eventually, she didn’t feel the need to take it off in between trips to and from the kitchen and stood straight for entire nights at the inn.

Maybe that’s why she hadn’t been afraid of Elisha Cooke when he’d first looked at her. Cooke seemed to be just as scared as she was, his voice stuttering, eyes blinking too quickly, standing up abruptly from the table and nearly knocking over the rickety chair as he made a hasty exit from the inn. The other man who sat with him stared at her knowingly for a long beat, and she recognized him from the boat but did not hold his gaze. He was a rat man, she’d heard, and she wanted nothing to do with rat men. 

“Mister Cooke was married once before,” Mathilde explained later that night as she, Mathilde, and Renardette washed the dishes. “To a sweet French woman, Louise.” 

Delphine nodded, drying a saucer. 

“Do you want me to tell you more?” Mathilde asked, passing her a clean teacup.

“No,” Delphine replied. _I want to know for myself_ went unspoken. I want to hear it from him. He will tell me in his own time, as I may tell him in my own time. 

He’d been awkward with her again later that night when she’d seen him outside, inspecting his barrels in Mathilde’s stables, but she found it endearing. The smile she gave him was genuine, and the one on her face after he’d walked off was real, too. 

Delphine had overheard from other patrons that Cooke had done less than savory things. Bouchard was convinced he’d had something to do with the massacre at the settlement, other merchants whispered about his business dealings being opportunistic. Delphine decided she’d make her own decisions about Cooke, and when he asked her to come by to his place of business to see the albino beaver pelts, she wasn’t afraid when she agreed. She wanted to know for herself. 

Maybe his outsides looked bad to the town, too, maybe everyone knew the worst things about him, but perhaps his insides were good. He didn’t swear, he seemed to respect Mathilde, he never grabbed for women the way other men did. Delphine liked that he dressed well, and was groomed. He didn't unsettle or scare her, and that had to count for something. 

The next day, she readied herself to make the short walk to Cooke & Sons and told Mathilde she’d be back soon. Mathilde did not have to tell her to keep her shoulders back or her head up. She held them proudly on her own now. 

Whatever he wanted to say to her today, she would listen. Whatever he wanted to show her, she would see. Today, Delphine wasn’t afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot stop thinking about this show, and Delphine/Cooke is a pairing that came at me from out of nowhere. I didn't know I was going to ship them, but here we are! 
> 
> Big thanks to @jeynepoole on tumblr for basically being my beta for this, and for encouraging me to write more Barkskins fic. 
> 
> And thank you, excellent human, for reading! You can find me on tumblr @itslaurenmae


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